Meta’s Horizon Worlds is focused on user retention—not growth—now that ‘the metaverse hype is dead,’ exec says

Even a year ago, the hype was still so big that someone forked over $450,000 to be rapper Snoop Dogg’s neighbor in the “Snoopverse” and Citi estimated the metaverse economy would be worth $13 trillion by 2030, Fortune editor-in-chief Alyson Shontell reminded participants at Fortune‘s Brainstorm Tech conference this week.

But in the blink of an eye, the boom turned to bust. Meta Inc., which—as its name suggests—went all-in on the metaverse, saw its stock tumble by almost three-quarters in the second half of 2022, partly due to the billions it spent on its metaverse without having significant revenues to back up its big bet. Disney and Microsoft, meanwhile, closed their metaverse departments altogether.

So what does the future hold for the industry?

“The metaverse hype is dead,” Meta’s metaverse chief Vishal Shah acknowledged in his conversation with Shontell at Brainstorm Tech in Park City, Utah, yesterday. His division’s main product, Horizon Worlds, is now focused on user retention, rather than growth, and on building a valuable core offering, rather than a sprawling expansion. The most popular use cases, he said, are in “social,” gaming, and fitness—not business.

Of course, the metaverse, like other technologies that came before it, may just be returning to earth rather than facing outright extinction. Apple announced its premium augmented reality headset “Vision Pro” just last month. Meta too is still investing in its more “democratic” version of the metaverse, Shah said.

But for now at least, much of the tech world seems to have moved on. The debate on regulating A.I. and the newly launched battle between Twitter and Meta’s Threads are the new talk of the town. Threads just yesterday surpassed the 100 million user count, beating a record set by OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

For the rest of us, I would argue the lesson is to focus on the undercurrent, rather than the comings and goings of waves at the surface. The real question for executives is how to keep their business models relevant in the digital age, not whether they should buy a virtual house next to Snoop Dogg’s. For lawmakers, it is how to maintain trust and shared prosperity when this era’s technologies naturally cause the opposite.

More news below.

Peter Vanham
peter.vanham@fortune.com
@petervanham

TOP NEWS

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Fake nickel 

A Hong Kong-based sandwich store owner and a Dubai-based hotel chef are wrapped up in a $535 million fake nickel scandal. The two individuals are reportedly the owners of two of seven companies accused of defrauding commodity trader Trafigura by selling it the nonexistent metal earlier this year. The scandal has raised questions about Trafigura’s due diligence as the company ignored missing details on who it was buying from. Financial Times

Correction, July 12, 2023: An earlier version of this article misstated the magnitude of Trafigura's fake nickel scandal.

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This edition of CEO Daily was curated by Nicholas Gordon.